Tear The World Down
by the ticking clock
Summary: As their world crumbles around them, Clint and Natasha run. The aftermath of The Winter Soldier. References to Avengers. Spoilers.


**I have no idea what this emotional mess of a fic is. I've been wanting to write it since I saw Winter Soldier a few weeks ago, but the words weren't coming out write...Regardless, here it is. I thought there was a lack of Hawkeye in the movie, so I had to add a little bit. Agents of Shield and Winter Soldier has emotionally crippled me. Wow. **

**The Russian in this fic is taking from Google Translate. My apologies if it is not correct. **

**Anyway, let me know what you think of this...**

Natasha's seen plenty of corpses in her life. She is familiar with the frigid tension, the stillness, the complete lack of movement that feels so very _wrong. _

She's come to expect death. Push away everyone and anything, make relationships fleeting and fake. She's excelled at just the correct amount of acting and genuine friendship since she was a child.

But this is SHIELD.

SHIELD is different. Fury is different.

She can still remember coming in with Clint into Fury's office. She remembers how the blood had been roaring in her ears and her hands were shaking and her tongue tasted like blood. Clint's hand was on her shoulder but he had been of little comfort to her. She'd barely known him, only known that he'd spared her life for some ridiculous reason.

She'd expected shouts. Accusations. A hand across the face. Interrogation.

Fury had been standing with his back to them, hands folded behind him. He hadn't said a word since they'd arrived.

Clint had simply said, "Sir."

Fury had waited for exactly a minute(Natasha remembers counting) before turning around. "Who have you brought us, Barton?"

Natasha had known that he knew exactly who she was. There was no way he could not. SHIELD had been sent to kill her.

But he was looking at her with a kind of calculated curiosity and something skirting the edges of gentleness. And he said, "What can you do for us?"

And she'd answered, "Repent." And the word tasted like bile and metal on her tongue.

He'd nodded, almost imperceptibly and said, "well, alright then."

* * *

SHIELD had saved her. Nick Fury had given her another chance, even after she'd blown several missions, come back furious and raving like an animal he'd never given up on her.

If Coulson was her friend-Fury was her father.

Looking at his corpse, Natasha feels nothing and everything. She's crying, she can feel the tears itching behind her eyes and the wetness on her cheeks. She wants to say something, but all the words in her head sound terribly sentimental and not something she wants to share with Steve and Maria standing behind her.

So she briefly presses her finger's to that bald head, digs them in, until she can feel the cold realness of his death, and turns away.

* * *

She does not mind working with Steve.

She's always admired him. She understands that he is the one who is truly keeping the Avengers together(even if they've gone their separate ways for now). She likes Steve, teases him, watches his back, but she wants Clint.

She wants someone who knows all her secrets, knows how to calm her down, knows how to handle her emotional storms. Steve is polite; he doesn't question her too harshly about her past or her motives, but there is a tension between them. A tension of, "I know things you don't" and it itches under skin and festers there like a sore. Natasha cannot stand tension, unless she is manipulating it.

* * *

They save each other.

She always knew that Steve would not hesitate to put his life before hers, hers or anybody's, but it is gratifying to know that she can trust him this way. There is a strange bond that forms between to people in danger and she can feel their friendship tightening. Once upon a time, this would have terrified her. But now, she lets him in, just a little.

It is not healthy to have to many secrets after all.

* * *

Everything is a blur after discovering Hydra.

It's a rush of adrenaline and pain and battles and gun powder in her nose and the familiar kick of a gun in her hand, and Steve nearly dying and shouted orders and voices rough with tears and-

It's chaos.

She thinks briefly of Loki, and how he would have enjoyed this wild destruction. They have a connection, her and the trickster, her and the monster. He understands her and she understands him. Broken people have a way of recognizing those like them.

* * *

She packs her bags and runs.

The whole process is painfully familiar-forging fake ID's, papers, making a new name for herself. She slips into a new face, although her Agent of Shield personna does not want to come off. She does not think she will ever fully rid herself of it. It has become so intertwined with her identity. But she balls it up and stores is away for another time.

Steve is looking at her with so much uncertainty in his eyes and she wants to say something comforting, because if she's learned nothing else through their mission, it is that Steve is not really the confident Captain America. He's still very much a lost young kid, out of his own time.

They are professional though, in their goodbyes. She kisses his cheek and flashes a smile over her shoulder, leaves him standing in a graveyard.

She waits until she's on the road to call Clint.

* * *

He picks up after one ring.

"Natasha?"

She closes her eyes at the familiar, worried rough tones and for half a humiliating second thinks she is going to cry. "Hey."

"What the hell happened? Are you alright, what-"

"Clint," She says, quietly. Her stomach is in knots and her head is pounding. She's not sure if it is from the adrenaline or the emotions she's keeping in check or if she is realizing something, "Clint," She says again, "do you know what happened?"

"Yeah," He says, and his voice is shaking, but Clint is a good actor.

"Swear to me that you're you."

"Jesus, Natasha-"

"_Do it." _

_ "Я обещаю." _He whispers. _I promise. _

"Tell me something only you would know. Something no one but us and Coulson would know," Her voice is trembling too, but this is Clint. She does not need to control herself with him, even if she is potentially accusing him of working for Hydra.

"You hate spiders."

She can't help but laugh a little. "God, Clint, what are we-"

"Where are you?" He cuts her off, tired of the pretense.

"DC."

He curses, softly and then says, "I'll be there in eight hours."

She holds onto the phone, even after it goes dead, and reminds herself to breathe.

* * *

The reality of the new situation has not quite hit her yet.

She's running on pure instinct, slipping into her new face and name(Rachel...she's never really liked the name Rachel but it is one she hasn't used yet) Doing the familiar work of espionage. Hiding her true identity and maintaining her cover.

But she doesn't have Coulson to call anymore, or Maria Hill for that matter. She's not receiving any orders.

Steve's texted her a few times to check in, asking if she's alright, and she's responded simply or not at all.

She hasn't allowed herself to feel just yet.

She knows from experience that she can go a few days like this-emotions locked down, all acting and false smiles. Sooner or later, though, she's going to have to come to terms with SHIELD's collapse. She has never been one to run from the truth, but she has yet to acknowledge the emotional consequences.

To be honest, she is a little afraid of what will happen when she does.

* * *

She picks Clint up at the airport. They don't say anything to each other. He gives her an odd, trembling half smile. She can feel the emotion choking her-closing her throat and burning her eyes, and she shuts it down. Not here, in this public place. She picks up one of Clint's bags and jerks her chin towards the car. He follows quietly, and despite the growing knot in her stomach and the lump in her throat, Natasha feels a little safer with her partner by her side again.

* * *

She drives.

Clint sits in the passenger seat as they roar down the highway, still in silence. Silence has never been uncomfortable with Clint. Some of her fondest memories in their partnership consist of silence-bandaging each other in a forest, huddled together for warmth in the middle of nowhere, sharing looks during meetings with Coulson and Fury...

"Natasha." Clint's voice is quiet, but there is tension in it. She spares him a quick glance.

"What?"

"Do you want to pull over?"

It's an odd request. She hums something noncommittal and keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the road.

"Natasha. What happened when I was gone?"

He's pushing her. She knows that he knows he is pushing her, and that he doesn't care. He deserves to know, anyway. She takes a deep breath, but she can't find calm anymore. She can't lock her emotions away in the back of her mind and tell him the truth cooly and remotely. She can't do that to him.

"Fury, he-" Her eyes burn furiously and she grips the steering wheel tighter. Even though she knows Nick is alive, the thought of it still-

"Natasha," Clint has not raised his voice, but there is a definite note of command in his voice. "Pull over."

The authority rattles her. She ignores him.

"Natasha."

"I can't believe that it's just...I don't even know what to think anymore."

"I know."

"What are we going to do?" She's mostly talking to herself know, whispering the words, those poisonous words of doubt that burn against her tongue, that taste like bitter pills and pain, "Where are we going to go?"

Black Widow would not ask these questions. Black Widow would lift her chin and stride forward without a care in the world, but she is not Black Widow now. She is Natasha and she is hurting and she thinks she just might die from the pain of it all.

"Natasha," Clint touches her arm, gently, lightly, but it is enough to pull her out of herself and back into the present. "Natasha, stop the car."

She jerks the wheel to the side and slams on the brake, skidding and ungracefully exiting the highway until they are stopped along the shoulder.

"There," Clint says, still in that same gentle voice. She glares at him through her burning eyes, hating the softness in his tone. She needs him to be practical. She needs him to be strong. She needs him to come up with a plan because she has absolutely no idea what they are going to do and it is petrifying.

But he is only looking at her. Looking at her the same, reserved gentle compassion and hard pain that she'd seen the very first time they'd ever met.

_"Who are you?" _

_ "My name is Hawkeye. I'm an agent of SHIELD. I've been sent here to kill you."_

_ "So why haven't you?" _

Her breath is hitching in her throat, and her chest is too tight and her eyes are burning and everything is a blur of pain and pounding fear in her mind. Her instincts screaming, run, run, run while her mind fights and crumbles and whispers, you have nowhere to run to.

"Hey," Clint says, and reaches for her. She lets him. Let's him grip her shoulder until it hurts, let's him say, "Natasha, Natasha, breathe, alright. Breathe." He doesn't say that it's okay and that everything is going to be alright because it isn't. But she leans into his touch and eventually unbuckles her seatbelt and crawls across the divide into his arms.

He wraps his arms around her and she buries her head in his shoulder.

"Just breathe, Nat," he says, and she can feel that he is trembling too, despite the strength in his voice, "Breathe."

She does. She inhales and breaths out in raw gasps, air hot and scorching down her throat. She breathes and she cries and she let's Clint hold her until the tears stop.

* * *

They drive for hours.

They have no real destination in mind, it is the kind of mindless terror that Natasha had grown up with-running because you have too. Every car passing them on the highway could be an enemy. She's tense and wild and she knows that Clint it watching her.

"We should call the others," he says, around the eighth hour of driving.

"I think Stark knows," she says, eyes still on the road, "and we can't reach Thor."

"Natasha."

She rolls her eyes at his tone but nods. "Alright."

They call Tony first. He picks up without the usual snark and asks, "Are you two alright?"

"How would you define "alright"? Natasha quips. She can hear the slight smile in his voice when he says, "I don't know...alive, not Hydra spies?"

"Yeah. We're alright," Clint says quietly. "You?"

"Fine, fine," Tony says easily, far to easily. Natasha has learned to read Stark's emotions and she can tell just how unstable he is. "Always hated all those top-secret SHIELD meeting we had to go to anyway."

"How's Banner?" Natasha asks.

"Hasn't quite calmed down yet," Tony says with genuine ease. How he is so natural about the Hulk Natasha cannot fathom, but she knows Bruce appreciates it. "Steve okay?"

"He will be," Natasha says, although she isn't sure. Steve hasn't mentioned Bucky yet, but she knows that the Winter Soldier still haunts him.

"Keep in touch, alright?" Tony is being oddly sentimental today-they all are. Guards are down and emotions are raw, now, with their whole world falling to pieces around them.

"Will do," Clint says, and hangs up. He blows out his breath in a sigh and tilts his head back against the seat. "Where the hell are we going, Nat?" He asks.

Natasha shrugs. "Somewhere far, far away from here," she says, and steps on it.


End file.
